HOW NOT TO NETWORK

I'm currently back in London after a flying visit home to the Midlands on Sunday/Monday, to see one of my best friends who's been in hospital (she's fine by the way!) but it was lovely to see her. I came back yesterday to attend a 'Personal Branding: How to build a successful online presence in the arts' talk from elle (emerging legacy leaders east) - held at Stour Space in Hackney Wick.

They had four speakers there; Vicki Fong, a digital fashion lecturer from UEL, Regine Debatty, a blogger/curator at we-make-money-not-art.com, Lorena Munoz-Alonso, an art critic/journalist from selfselector.co.uk and Matthew Caines, the Editor of the Guardian Culture Professional Network. They only had about ten minutes each to talk, but all gave their insight into current social media platforms, how they have evolved and how they have assisted them in their careers.

To be honest, I thought the event might be slightly more geared towards artists, but was mainly all about writing for the arts and pitching, which wasn't really that useful for me. But it was good to hear the advice, especially from the Guardian Editor about how to check your facebook and twitter insights to see which posts are gaining more popularity, and researching the best times to send out updates.

At the end there was a 'networking' session but I'm always crap at those sort of things! Is it just me?? But everyone else seems to know each other already and are all chatting away. I feel a bit of a fool just approaching someone. Plus it seemed they were all writers, so I scuttled off early into the night...